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This module provides access to the Unix user account and password database. It
is available on all Unix versions.

Password database entries are reported as a tuple-like object, whose attributes
correspond to the members of the passwd structure (Attribute field below,
see <pwd.h>):

Index

Attribute

Meaning

0

pw_name

Login name

1

pw_passwd

Optional encrypted password

2

pw_uid

Numerical user ID

3

pw_gid

Numerical group ID

4

pw_gecos

User name or comment field

5

pw_dir

User home directory

6

pw_shell

User command interpreter

The uid and gid items are integers, all others are strings. KeyError is
raised if the entry asked for cannot be found.

Note

In traditional Unix the field pw_passwd usually contains a password
encrypted with a DES derived algorithm (see module crypt). However most
modern unices use a so-called shadow password system. On those unices the
pw_passwd field only contains an asterisk ('*') or the letter 'x'
where the encrypted password is stored in a file /etc/shadow which is
not world readable. Whether the pw_passwd field contains anything useful is
system-dependent. If available, the spwd module should be used where
access to the encrypted password is required.